Saturday, April 26

There
is something that appeals to me about little tanks. I don’t know if it is the
whole David Vs Goliath thing, or the disbelief of how the crews actually
functioned in these machines. I like their toy like appearance and the part
they played on the battlefield....

When
I saw Bronco were releasing this little CV3/33 tankette I was really keen to
get my hands on it and build it up. I have seen variations on the kit before
and loved the cramped interior the kit was providing.

On
opening the box it becomes very apparent just how small this tank was. It
really looks like it should be 1/48, but it is definitely 1/35!

The
kit itself comes with a full interior and engine. I had decided from the start
to not have the engine showing on my build, but thought I would build it up in
the interests of the article.

Now
I am pretty time poor these days, so I thought I would rip through the
instructions and do as much sub assembly as I could to speed the build up. In
hindsight this was a mistake, but more on that later.

Some basic sub assembly work. Be careful on the wheel assemblies. Because I rushed ahead I think my alignment of some of these pieces caused me issues with the tracks and wheels lining up properly. If I had followed the instructions and worked through them I feel this would have been avoided.

Forgive
me for not taking a few more progress pics. I tend to get in a zone and forget.
These pictures show the interior of the tank coming together. I wish Bronco had
had some form of colour reference for the interior (and the engine for that
matter) It was hard to get any form of decent information on the interior
colours.

The best I could come up with
was a red oxide colour for the floor, a greyish white for the interior and the
transmission was a burnt oil / metal finish. I am happy to be corrected on
this, but this was the best I could come up with. Like I said, Bronco could
have made it real easy and given us some colour specs !

There
are some nice little photo etch parts for the pedals and levers in the cabin.
The storage bays for the ammunition were empty, so it would have been a nice
addition to have the option to load them up with something. That said I
remained conscious that most of the interior would never see the light of day,
so I tried not to get too tied up on the interior details.

I
found the fit of the radiator (think that is what it is??) and engine extremely
tight. Again I think this was a matter of me not running through the build in
the order I should have. I really only included them in the interests of the
build, so I wasn’t too upset with some misalignment as it was all about to be
lost anyway

Also
in this pic you can see I have put all the wheel assemblies on the tank. That
large brace that aligns all the wheels has to fit through the holes in the
wheel assemblies. My wheels didn’t sit flush on the track because I had pre
made them and couldn’t make any fine adjustments. I figured at the end of the
day you probably wouldn’t notice it anyway.

I
was a little disappointed there wasn’t a few spare links for the tracks. My cat decided to help with the build and
misplaced a couple of the tiny links… There were no spares… I did the best I
could with joining them all up but as you can see it was far from ideal. The
skewing was just the way it dried. That angle is the worst it gets. From the
sides it looked fine. Just be careful to
keep track of the parts and keep your build in motion and it should all come
together for you.

About
to seal the model. Was a real shame saying goodbye to all the work on the
interior. Thought I would take a couple
of last shots. I was planning on having a driver in the seat, but it was so
tiny and cramped in there I thought better of it as most of the figures I was
considering would have taken a lot of surgery to make them fit.

With
the lid all sealed and the interior full of tissue the model is primed with an
Alclad white primer and filler.

The base is coated in Vallejo Air Sand Yellow.
I was going to display both hatches open initially but later went in a
different direction.

Skipped
a few steps again sorry… Here I have free-handed the green camo pattern and
added the decals as well as a basic oil wash. Because is the shrunken scale of
the subject I feel that the overspray on the green is really noticeable and
toyed with the idea of going in a different direction but figured it would tone
down with further washes and dusting. Having said that, most of the reference
shots I found had the tank looking pretty messy.

The camouflage seemed to be applied in the field
and generally quite random and varied in design and coverage.

Here
you can see one of the exhaust pipes. I used a compound to add the texture is
simulate a rusted pipe. It was coloured with pigments. Up close it looks a
little odd, but to the naked eye it was reasonably convincing. I did however
find the pieces didn’t line up as well as they could have.

I
went on to further shade the darker areas with the airbrush and did a number of
further washes with oils.

I
made the mistake of trying to chip it up a bit with a sponge and some
black/grey paint. I feel that rather than looking like chips it just made the
model look dirty. I had come too far to do anything about it though, so
proceeded to give it a light dusting with Vallejo Ivory Sand and created a few
streaks and rust marks with pigments.

I
ended up closing one of the hatches because I felt it looked a little more
interesting and you really couldn’t see much of the interior anyway.

There
were a lot of tiny parts, especially the handles on the hatches that were
really inclined to knock off. In the end I just had to replace missing handles
with some cut wire. In reality they are so small on the actual model I decided
it was a reasonable substitute.

I
wanted to show just how tiny these tanks really were. There are a number of Italian tanker figures
available but the one I settled on was a WOLF miniature.

He
was painted with Vallejo acrylics and oils. The molding on the resin figure is
bulky but beautiful.

When
displaying the figure next to the tank you really get a feel for how claustrophobicand
uncomfortable these things must have been for the crew of two.

The
base is a simple plaster cast with kitty litter used to simulate rock. I was
inspired by a pic I saw. Obviously
different markings but I liked the terrain and the angular aspect.

On
reflection I would approach this build a little differently next time. I guess
that is the thing with this hobby…there is always a lesson to learn. Some of
the techniques I employed work on the larger scale tanks but tended to mess the
smaller subject up. The small subject magnifies imperfection and is far more difficult
to mask any errors in the build and finish. That said to the naked eye the subject is tiny
and reasonably forgiving. The camera really does show it all up.

I
still love the subject and am a big fan of this Bronco kit. I can’t vouch too
much for the accuracy of the kit or the number or position of bolts and rivets.
The hobby has never been about that for me. It would have been nice to have a
few spare tracks and handles, but that could have been avoided with a little
more care on my part. The gun barrels were also a little unconvincing as they
never really sat straight and parallel. A couple of metal barrels would have
been an amazing addition, but that is a minor complaint.

Just
be gentle with it, take your time and follow the steps in a methodical order
and you will end up with a tasty little piece of history for your display
cabinet.